 Welcome to the Endless Knot Cocktail Bar. Today we're mixing up Americanos to find out why this drink is just right. The Americano is a tall drink made with Campari and vermouth mixed with soda water. It was first served in the 1860s by Gaspari Campari in his café Campari. Gaspari, of course, invented not only this cocktail, but also the bitters which bears his name. Of course, at the time, the drink wasn't called an Americano. Instead, it was known originally as a Milano Torino after the origins of the two main ingredients, Campari from Milan and a particular type of vermouth called Punte Mes from Turin. Legend has it that the drink became particularly popular with American expats during prohibition during the early 20th century, who then brought the Campari back with them under the loophole of it being classified as a medicinal product. And because of this American connection, the drink became rechristened as the Americano. Another probably less likely theory is that the name of the drink is derived from the Italian word Amaro, which means bitter, Campari being a type of Amaro, a class of Italian alcohol. Vermouth, too, is sometimes classified as an Amaro, so I guess the Americano does indeed feature this particular type of bitter liqueur. Vermouth gets its name from being originally flavored with wormwood, which in German is called vermouth. Though it's uncertain where this German word comes from, there is an old English cognate referring to the wormwood plant, vermouth. This has led some to etymologize the word as where, meaning man, think werewolf, literally man-wolf, plus mode, related to our modern word mood, but with the original sense of courage. Supposedly the reason the plant was called man courage was that it was used as an aphrodisiac, if you see what I mean. But if the Americano is connected with America, then going back further, where does the name America come from? Well, as you may have learned in school, the Americas were named after Amarigo Vespucci, the explorer and cartographer who demonstrated that what Europeans had discovered was not in fact Asia, but a new to them continent. But we can go back even further and trace the origin of that name, Amarigo, which comes from an old Visigothic name, Amalric, or Amalaric. The Visigoths were a Germanic tribe who, at the end of the Roman Empire, marched through Europe and set up a kingdom in what is modern-day Spain, which lasted from the 4th to the 8th century. So that's how this Germanic name made it to the Mediterranean. And of course we can etymologize even further and see in the name the Germanic components Amal, meaning work or labor, and Rik, meaning ruler, coming through Celtic ultimately from the proto-Indo-European root Reg, which meant something like to move in a straight line and thus to lead or rule. So a good name for a hardworking ruler I suppose. In fact, there was a king Amalaric of the Visigoths during the 6th century, though he may not appear very admirable to us. After a politically motivated marriage to the Frankish Princess Clotilda, Amalaric beat his wife to coerce her into converting to the Aryan heresy, and her appeal to her brother Kildebert to punish him for this brought on a Frankish invasion which ultimately led to his death. By the way, that Indo-European root Reg also gives us such words as right, rich, rule, and in Latin, Rex, meaning king. Appropriate then that this is an element in the name America, where many have gone to find the American dream of working hard to earn their riches, but odd that the country has its foundation in the Republican movement of rejecting a king. Speaking of the word right and Republicans, it's the Republican movement in revolutionary France that led to the left-right political labels. You see it the supporters of the king, Roix in French, from Latin Rex, appropriately enough gathered on the right side of the National Assembly and the revolutionaries on the left. And before you point out that right in French is Roix, I'll point out that Roix comes from Latin d'Hirigo, from dis plus rego, and is therefore cognate with English right. So the left-right labels just stuck, and still today the political right refers to the more conservative factions in the political left to the innovators. Perhaps the labels have survived because they seem appropriate, since the political right often sees themselves as following the straight and narrow path to rule, whereas lefty is often used pejoratively by the right to refer to what they see as the weaker side. And in fact, left did originally mean weak in old English, and it was only in the 13th century that the word became the paired opposite of right from the notion of the non-dominant hand. Before that, the old English word for left was winestra, meaning literally friendlier, a euphemism due to the old superstition that the left side was unlucky. You can see the same thing in Latin with the word sinister, which probably originally euphemistically meant more useful, according to some etymologists. In modern English, however, the word only retains its pejorative associations. The French for left doesn't come from sinister, but is instead gauche, coming from the Germanic and Frankish language, ultimately from a proto-Indo-European root weng, meaning to bend or curve. The English borrowing gauche has a pejorative connotation like sinister. We may as well complete the set with the Latin word for right, which was dexter, from which we get dexterity in English. This comes from a proto-Indo-European root dex, which means not only right, but also south, which would be on your right if facing east. I suppose because that's where the sun rises, so it's easy to reckon. The corresponding opposite in proto-Indo-European was nere, which means both left and north, and indeed gives us the word north, which I suppose brings us back to North America. And speaking of North America and pejorative meanings, the other meaning of the word americano is the type of coffee, the cafe americano, which according to legend comes from World War II American GIs who watered down their espressos to make them more like US coffee, the term allegedly being used by Italians in a pejorative or derogatory sense. Speaking of watering down drinks, or rather the opposite of watering down drinks, if the americano cocktail doesn't pack enough punch for you, you can replace the soda water with gin, and you'll have a negroni. The story goes that this drink was first served at the Cafe Cassone in Florence in 1919 by bartender Fosco Scarcelli to one Count Negroni who wanted his americano, or Milano Torino as it was called at the time, with a little more kick. And who was this Count Negroni? Well, he's been possibly identified as Camillo Negroni who was born in 1868 to Count Enrico Negroni and Ada Savage Landor and died in Florence in 1934. Camillo was quite a character and adventurer according to legend. He apparently traveled to America in 1892 in search of adventure and riches, spending time as a riverboat gambler, fencing instructor, cowboy wannabe, and even a banker before returning to his native Florence in 1910 to invent his eponymous cocktail. Funny thing is, the picture that's usually associated with him with a dapper mustache and top hat isn't really him. It's Arnold Henry Savage Landor who may in fact be his cousin. Henry Savage Landor was also something of an adventurer, an English painter, writer, explorer, and apparently cat fancier who was a raconteur to Queen Victoria and who during World War I designed tanks and airships. The grandfather of both these men was the romantic poet Walter Savage Landor, also a lively and wild character. So I guess it runs in the family who as it happens wrote a play about the aftermath of the defeat of the last Visigothic king in Spain. Well, everything is connected. But another possible candidate for the inventor of the Negroni cocktail is one general Pascal Olivier de Negroni. This Count Negroni was born in France on the island of Corsica in 1829 and died in 1913. According to this story, Pascal Negroni invented the drink in honor of his wife, how romantic, while stationed in Senegal in 1857, how colonial. Of course, the problem is that Campari wasn't invented until 1860, so it must have been a somewhat different drink with a different bidders. In any case, general Negroni's main claim to fame was that he led the charge of the Mounted Cavalry Queer Seers in the battle of Reichshofen in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Note that name, Reichshofen from the same route that's been wending its way through this story of Americanos from the Visigothic Amalaric to the riches of America. So, was the Negroni invented in 1857 in Senegal by a badass war hero, or in 1919 in Florence by an eccentric adventurer who liked to dress up as a cowboy? Who knows? The drink wasn't mentioned in print until 1947 when notorious drinker Orson Wells was quoted as saying, the bidders are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you, they balance each other. Maybe these two origin stories also balance each other. But getting back to American riches, our story has an epilogue which takes us to the American dollar. The word dollar comes from the German taller short for Joachimstaller, a coin made from the silver mined in Joachimstall, a town in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. And you could say the town of Joachimstall made a mint from it. The town is named after Saint Joachim, who according to the non-biblical Gospel of James was the father of the Virgin Mary and was known as a rich man who gave to the poor. One of the theories of where the American dollar sign comes from is that it's the monogram of Saint Joachim with the S and J or I overlaid on each other. Though the more well known theories are that it comes from the abbreviation PS for the Spanish American peso, another popular coin in the early days of America, or that it comes from the monogram US for obvious reasons. Returning to Joachimstall, the second part of that name tall means valley. So Joachimstall is Saint Joachim's valley. It's the same second element as in Neanderthal because the first Neanderthal specimen was found in the Neander valley near Düsseldorf. That valley was named after a hymn writer named Neander. Well, actually his real name in German would have been Neumann, meaning literally new man, but his grandfather had translated the name Neumann into Greek Neander, or in other words, neoander, meaning literally new man. Funny then that an older form of human, the Neanderthal, is named after a new man. As for our hymn writer Neander's first name, as chance would have it, it was Joachim. And finally, getting back to the Joachimstall, as I said, the coin became really popular and suddenly everyone was minting their own tallers or dollars, not just America, but the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and perhaps most importantly at the time, the Holy Roman Empire, and they called their coin the Reichstaller, with that same reg root as the first element, bringing us right back to the Americano. To make an Americano, pour one ounce each of Camparian vermouth over ice in an old fashioned glass. I'm using a vermouth from Turin for extra authenticity. Mix and then add a splash of soda water and garnish with half an orange slice. Thanks for watching. If you've enjoyed these etymological explorations and cultural connections, please subscribe to this channel or share it. And check out our Patreon where you can make a contribution to help me make more videos. I'm at alliterative on Twitter and you can read more of my thoughts on my blog at alliterative.net.